The weather is finally good enough for me to sit in the garden and listen to my books. I love reading in the open air. Anyway, here’s what I’ve read and bought this week and what’s up next.
This week, I read two books that I’d been looking forward to: the second Nora Breen Investigates book and the eigth Murderbot book.
Sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen is back, as the latest attraction in Gore-on-Sea turns deadly . . .
On a brilliant December morning, Nora finds her customary seaside walk rudely interrupted: she’s been summoned, with Detective Inspector Rideout, to the home of Doreen Chimes, Gore-on-Sea’s resident medium. Chimes would like to report a robbery – and to personally invite Rideout to that evening’s private séance.
It’s an invitation he will regret accepting: the evening ends in a suspiciously spooky murder. And in the coming days, more of the attendees will find themselves in peril. Can Nora figure out who – or what – is behind these spectral killings before it’s too late?
‘Murder at the Spirit Room’ (2026) was every bit as good as I’d hoped it would be.
I love the way that Jess Kid writes. The cadence of the storytelling and the idioms used remind me of the way the adults around me spoke when I was growing up on Merseyside in the 1970s. It rings true to me while also pressing my nostalgia buttons.
The plot required some suspension of disbelief, but not so much that it spoiled my enjoyment. From the start, I knew how the first murder was done, but not by whom or why. I didn’t see the rest of the murders coming, and I didn’t guess the murderer’s identity.
What I enjoyed most about the book was being back in Nora Breen’s company. I enjoyed watching Nora measure herself against the world outside the monastery and accepting that her appetite for puzzles is insatiable.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.
Including human children. Ugh.
This may well call for … eye contact!
(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)
I wasn’t sure that this novella was going to work. The beginning felt a little.flat to me, which was odd because the Murderbot is plunged into action from the first page. I think it took too long for me to discover why Murderbot was there and what he was angry about. The mechanics of his infiltration into the space station were vividly described, but weren’t engaging.
Once I had the context, I enjoyed the story more. The action scenes worked. The concept of the giant Taurus around a plant was vividly imagined. I enjoyed seeing Murderbot having to get up close and personal with human children and finding that not everything about it was as bad as it had imagined.
I bought five books this week: a thriller about a true crime podcast duo, a classic collection of Science Fiction short stories by one of my favourite writers, an Irish thriller featuring a young woman who can see people’s demons, a literary Science Fiction novel, and a speculative fiction novel about a sentient vacuum cleaner’s struggle for identity.
’A Cute Little Murder’ (2026), the latest novel from Molly Harper, is a bit of a departure for her. Nothing supernatural this time. Instead, we’re in the world of cold case true crime podcasts. I’m hoping it will be a smile.
I fell in love with James Tiptree Jr’s science fiction short stories decades ago. She was one of the writers who helped me fall in love with speculative fiction. ’Her Smoke Rose Up Forever’ (1990) contains some of her most famous stories.
In her latest thriller, ‘Burning Secrets’ (2026), Michelle Dunne has introduced a supernatural element to the story. I’ve always enjoyed her novels. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does with the “I see people’s demons” premise.
Cecile Pin’s first novel, ‘Wandering Souls’ (2023), was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. ‘Celestial Lights’ (2026) is her second novel. I’m interested in it because it sounds as if it will be a literary SF novel with the focus on the personality, thoughts and history of the main character. Sometimes that makes for excellent SF, and sometimes it falls flat. I’m hoping this one will pull me into the main character’s way of seeing the world.
The only thing I know for certain about ‘The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances’ (2026) is that it’s quirky. I hope it’s also fun and has something to say.
These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind.
Revisions from the author’s notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work.
The Nebula Award-winning short story “Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death”, the Hugo Award-winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.
There was no point in telling them about the others. Not when it was already too late. Or at least, it would be by the time they found them.
The world discounted Sadie Kingston years ago, right around the time her parents died. They think she’s crazy, but actually, she’s one of the chosen few.
Sadie can see peoples’ demons you see. They glow in different colours, all around the person they torment. Some are mild and sad – teal, green, yellow – while others are filled with rage and pain – red. Always red.
But as Sadie tries to survive in a world that won’t listen, she knows there will come a time when she’ll be forced to act. If the people around her won’t wake up and see what’s happening under their noses, then it will fall to her to show them the truth…
28 January, 1986: Moments after launch, the Challenger shuttle falls from the sky. At the same time, in a small English village, Oliver Ines is born.
Ollie spends his childhood in a bedroom covered in glow-in-the-dark wallpaper, bearing the planets and stars. Decades later, he has become one of the most renowned astronauts of his time. When an enterprising billionaire approaches him to lead a landmark, ten-year mission to the distant moon Europa, Ollie cannot resist the call of history.
As the mission advances deeper into uncharted territory, Ollie finds himself retreating into the past: his school days and years in the Navy, relationships found and lost, becoming a husband and father. But will the world he remembers still be waiting for him when he returns?
As teens, Harlow Drake and Lainey Piper built an online fandom solving small-town crimes. Harlow was the star, Lainey the behind-the-scenes genius (and often, Harlow’s scapegoat). Years later, Harlow’s hosting a hit true crime tv show. Lainey? She’s working in forensics. Well, forensic accounting . . . from home. In pajamas. With her cat.
But when Harlow faces significant backlash over fumbling a case, she needs a quick win—like a special investigation into the decades-old disappearance of a starlet from a once-glamorous, now decrepit island hotel. The catch? It’s bankrolled by Deke and Bryce of DBag Games, who are looking to shed their “frat bro” reputations. As long-time fans, they have one requirement for their funding: Lainey has to play the sidekick again.
In a self-running smart house, a young sentient hoover listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving human connection, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow appliances discover that the omnipresent Grid, which monitors every household in the City, wants to displace Harold from the home he’s lived in for fifty years. With the help of a neighbourhood boy, and Harold and Edie’s daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the Grid before they lose everything they hold dear…
This week, I’ll be reading a thriller featuring a retired British spy, a military Sci Fi novel, and a cosy mystery that takes an American heroine to the English Peak District..
When retired former spy Felicity Jardine’s mission to drown herself is interrupted by a baby drifting down river, her training kicks in at once. She saves the baby, and conceals herself from the shady-looking man who is searching for it.
Then an elderly neighbour to whom she bears a resemblance is found dead, and Felicity knows she’s been rumbled. She has to dust off the highly trained and resourceful secret service officer she used to be, ensure the safety of the baby, and re-enter the fray.
She can count on the help of two former MI6 colleagues to identify the murderer and find out exactly what’s going on. But Felicity soon realises that her work in 1970s Germany and her present are entangled – and she must face some hard truths before she can confront the demons of her past.
This is another entry for my list of novels about old people (in other words, people my age or a little older). I’m intrigued by the idea of a retired spy’s suicide being interrupted by a baby floating by in a car seat, resulting in her getting involved in skullduggery again.
Ky beats sabotage, betrayal, and the unforgiving elements to lead a ragtag group of crash survivors to safety on a remote arctic island. And she cheats death after uncovering secrets someone is hell-bent on protecting. But the worst is far from over when Ky discovers the headquarters of a vast conspiracy against her family and the heart of the planet’s government itself.
With their base of operations breached, the plotters have no choice but to gamble everything on an audacious throw of the dice. Even so, the odds are stacked against Ky. When her official report on the crash and its aftermath goes missing—along with the men and women she rescued—Ky realizes that her mysterious enemies are more powerful and dangerous than she imagined.
Now, targeted by faceless assassins, Ky and her family—along with her fiance, Rafe—must battle to reclaim the upper hand and unmask the lethal cabal closing in on them with murderous intent
This is the seventh and final book about Ky Vatta. The first six were great entertainment. I’m hoping that this one will deliver an exciting and satisfying finale.
When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.
Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
This is a roll of the dice for me. The premise intrigues me. I spent a lot of time in the Peak District way back in the last century so the setting interests me. I’m hoping for clever but cosy mystery with a few inventive twists.
Mike Finn's Fiction 